


These Simple Joys

by whichstiel



Series: Season 15 Codas [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel POV, Episode Tag, Episode: s15e01 Back and to the Future, Gen, M/M, back and to the future, episode coda, spn 15x01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-12 05:17:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20992343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whichstiel/pseuds/whichstiel
Summary: A state-of-mind piece examining Cas’s emotional state at the end of the episode.





	These Simple Joys

**Author's Note:**

> I'm adding this a day later (because I'm traumatizing people) that these won't all be sad. I firmly believe we're moving towards a big happy ending at the end of the season but right now we are starting sad. I'll write some catharsis at the end of the second episode since it'll likely conclude this ghost battle. If sad isn't your jam right now, wait to read until next week's is up!

Everything hurt, but Castiel was physically fine. Belphegor orbiting him felt like a peeling wound; every moment the demon spent within Jack’s mutilated body tore into him. 

Castiel was back in the backseat, with Belphegor chirruping next to him. In the front seat of the Impala, Dean sat like a rod of steel jammed through the seat cushion and Sam held himself too carefully, too stiff in a different way. Lines creased the corner of his eye when they hit a bump. Castiel tried to focus on Sam - the injury from Chuck’s gun. There was no bullet to dig out, and when he’d tried to heal it, Castiel had felt like a quickly unraveling sweater. Just one strong tug and he’d be gone, sucked into the vortex of Sam’s wound.

Not that a vortex promising oblivion wasn’t an attractive option right now.

Castiel set his jaw. First, they’d deal with the army of demons and ghosts Chuck had sent after them, then they’d deal with Sam’s injury. 

He could fix this situation, but still nothing would still be fine.

“Hey, you think we could stop somewhere on the way? I haven’t had anything to eat that wasn’t screaming in I don’t even know how long.” Belphegor cocked his head to one side and grinned. The sudden movement was so perfectly Jack that just for a moment, Castiel felt an alternate reality settle around his shoulders. They were on a case, and Jack was alive, and he hadn’t utterly failed Kelly or let down Jack. 

Inside Castiel’s sleeve, his blade seems to hum. It was angry, like a hissing cat directing its ire at Belphegor. He could knife him now and cut the demon down while he was rattling on about the best kinds of food and the many flavors of human suffering. 

“Will you shut him up back there?” Dean snapped. Castiel’s lips tightened. Because of course, there was also Dean to deal with. 

Dean, who he hated for driving Jack away. For almost killing him. For accepting death and rebirth so callously, so flippantly, but failing to process actual death in any meaningful manner.

Not that Castiel was any different. If he knew it would make a difference, he would plunge his own hand into his chest and draw out his heart. Throw it away.  _ If I’d only stayed in Heaven _ , he couldn’t help but think. None of this would have happened. But instead he meddled, and he strove, and he loved. In short, he was as hopelessly broken as they come. 

Because he loved Dean. And Sam, of course. But Dean above all, above everything. Even Jack. Guilt about that gnawed at his bones and sapped away his will to fight, to endure. 

_ I should have tried harder.  _

If he had, maybe they would be on a routine case right now. Call it a haunting - potentially brutal but with no deaths to stack onto his already burdened conscience. 

“Can we stop for milkshakes?” Jack would ask with high enthusiasm. His tolerance and thirst for sugar would have been legendary, if Castiel hadn’t already witnessed his brethren’s dedication to the substance. 

So of course they’d stop for milkshakes. Dean would grouchily order two, insisting that he couldn’t let Jack drink one alone. 

They’d sit together at a sunny table outside the diner, sunshine warming their hair and curling over their shoulders, a fine remedy for the haunted chill they’d dealt with earlier. Sam would pull out a tablet to start researching a new case and then forget it entirely when a dog bounded up, all furry enthusiasm. Sam and Jack would leave their seats, puppies themselves in their sheer excitement. 

Dean would watch them, sipping his milkshake, his eyes warm and relaxed. And when he turned a smile on Castiel, quiet and content, Castiel would think:  _ this is the purpose of life. These simple joys.  _

Castiel could fall into those eyes like they held vast constellations and he was once more a being made of light, existing in God’s creation. _Eyes were the window to the soul_, he’d heard on many occasions. And Dean’s soul... Dean’s soul was—

“Before we get rid of all your new ghost pals, I really gotta get some autographs. I mean...legends, right? Your early kills? Man!” Belphegor shattered the moment.

Castiel glared at him, then silently looked out the window. Every inch of him screamed to flee, to fly. But of course, flight was also a distant dream. 

He sat in the cold, quiet car and waited for the ride to stop. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading (and being sad with me)! Find me on Tumblr and Twitter @whichstiel


End file.
